Cool. I have to check with my editor to see if he still wants a profile. Now that I'm doing editing for Sherdog, which comes out of their features budget, it's hard to get them to assign me profiles. LOL. But I will try.

So we wrote out a whole meal plan for the week, which helped, and I've gotten all the crap food out of my house. Woot. Goulash for dinner today and an awesome salad for lunch, with hardboiled eggs and bacon and all kinds of goodies.

Sleep... only 6 hours last night, which seemed about right with the 10 I got the night before, but then I ended up taking a 2 hour nap instead. My goal is to slowly bring back the time I go to bed by about a half hour each night, maintain for a few days and then try to go to bed earlier until this thang is done.

Training... I still can't get motivated to go to Fundamentals and was too sleepy today to do advanced. Just did a little TRX work and mobility work on my own.

Other than tons of rolling, which doesn't seem in the cards right now as I go through our systematic levels of training, the only thing I feel excited about is lifting heavy shit, so I decided I need to go to the powerlifting gym in town or do something other than BJJ to keep my motivation up. Even once Intermediate starts, it's only 2X/week, and 2 easy and 2 hard classes a week isn't enough to keep me motivated and excited about training, but more than that and I don't know how well I'll recover. I guess morning classes are an option too and may help with the sleep thing, and they roll after those classes...which are all-levels. So I'll try to figure stuff out. But I think right now BJJ seems more like a long haul type thing and won't give me the immediate satisfaction I'm craving in my training, or much control over what I get to do, so it's time to start lifting shit.

$40 a month for a gym with tons of equipment seems nice, and I miss deadlifting. All I have is dumbbells up to 50 lbs., so I'm thinking I should just go to the gym and see where my squat, dead, power clean and shoulder press are at and go from there!

So I didn't train today b/c I was sick again. Lots of naps and now I'm staying up late to get all of my work done by deadlines... so many deadlines. Just did mobility stuff, but my diet was clean. I did go to an event today, though, so at least I did some networking.

I don't know if this is just a string of bad luck or what is going on but I just can't seem to get it together this month. It's hard because I was doing so well from Thanksgiving through mid-March. I need to train tomorrow, though, doing something other than just mobility gunk.

Still feeling about 85% so I skipped BJJ, but I did go to the powerlifting gym and spent my last $50 on a month membership. I figure that'd be long enough for me to figure out if that's what I want to do. Plus, there's something about going to the gym and getting to decide every single thing you get to do. There is so much in BJJ I have no control over... what we work on, who I'm working with, how long we do what, what the warm-ups are, etc.

Anyway, I just decided to play around a little bit, did some kettlebell swings, some drills (I work shots and sprawls and standing base every chance I get), some presses, some deadlifts, playing with single-leg squats, etc.

I'm trying to get a loose idea of what some of my numbers are. Deadlift is only 175, which sucks b/c my previous PR was 220, but 45 lbs. isn't that much of a loss considering I haven't lifted anything heavy in 17 months and spent a good portion of that rehabbing my arm. My heaviest dumbbells are 50 lbs. Shoulder press was only 75; I think I used to do 95 but that's neither here nor there.

I did not test my bench, power clean or squat yet. They do have a Gravitron, so I guess I could work my way back to it being an ineffective training too for me. I always mess up my arms before I get my first real pull-up. I'm not really sure how bad I need one anyway, though. My grip strength in BJJ is just fine.

I guess all I really feel like I need to do is hip dominant work, so KB swings and deadlifts (though I have to decide if I want to do sumo or traditional... I really like those weird hex bars too), and maybe some kind of rotational core training (though haven't decided what) and something to strengthen my mid-back, plus decide on the best hip flexor and front of shoulder stretches.

But I think I might get bored if I just do four exercises. I just want to have fun again and play and mess around. There's some programs I've done that I thought were a blast, and I may go back to one of those again. They are all in month-long increments. I think I need to move away from being time and energy-efficient and back towards having fun again, or at least finding a balance between the best exercises for my goals and having fun. Otherwise going to the gym will be a total drag.

Oh yeah, and I played around with as many of the Athletic Skill Level Exercises as I could stand. Knocked off 10 out of 21 offf of Level 1, a lot are things I already knew I could do, though. Even did medball cleans--nobody tell Greg. I'm just wondering if I have any real deficits other than the pull-up thing. And I wonder how much of the pull-up issue is due to my on-again off-again arm injuries, though that may be a cop-out.

So it took me a few days to recover from lifting heavy after not lifting anything for many many moons. Went to open mat on Saturday, and it was actually really good. I only rolled with 3 guys but I was there the whole time; we just went multiple rounds. Got a lot out of it. Today is the first intermediate class ever, and I'm psyched!

Went to Phase 2 (which is code for intermediate) today and it was awesome! We had a long and kinda different warm-up and worked three different omo plata setups. Well, it was one oma set-up and then two transitions based on ways they could defend. Alliance curriculum is so well thought-out, which is fun.

My coach said something about how I should split my time between fundamentals and intermediate, so I felt weird staying for advanced today but I asked permission and he said yeah, but it was gonna be hard. I kind of like hard, though. I don't think the techniques he teaches are any more difficult than any new techniques in, say, intermediate, AND we get to ACTUALLY ROLL at the end of class so I get to test out all this theory we've been learning and also work up a sweat. I think I will still go to fundamentals on Thursday b/c I really like the instructor, but I'm thinking M and W could be my intermediate/advanced days, and open mat on Saturday. 6 classes but 2 intermediate, 3 harder and only 1 fundamentals. I mean, I have mad respect for my coach but I am so sick of going to BJJ and not rolling. Then I could lift weights on Tuesday and Friday and take Sunday off... so we'll see.

Anyway, so I did advanced and we worked on a wrist lock set-up to armbar and a couple variations, and did a lot of drills, and then we did like 10 one-minute rounds, with a few breaks thrown in, and it was fun. My guard still needs a lot of work, but my hooks are getting trickier and i got a nice butterfly sweep today, plus an arm drag to back take on a pretty decent blue belt. My top/pressure game is getting really good, if I do say so myself, and I got some nice half guard passes and things. Lots of fun. I was pretty tired afterwards, too, which was nice. Finally excited about BJJ again.

Anyway, I like this workout program... It's a month worth of programming; 3 different workouts to do 4X each, no more than 6 exercises (usually 5), quick warm-up, and it's fun.

He has circuit interval workouts to do, too, but I think my jits can count as my cardio. I don't know, though. I guess it depends how hard we go, etc.

I'm a bit disappointed at how much strength I've lost. I guess I assumed I wasn't losing much since we do a lot of judo throws and training with resistance, and I've increased my BJJ strength, but my corner press and row were only at 70 lbs. (I used to do 90), my seesaw dumbbell press was with 25# dumbbells, and my machine flys are at like 40 lbs., seated row at 50. Aside from it being a nice change, maybe I really should be lifting weights more regularly just so my muscles won't atrophy.